Entries by Akom

Forgot to weigh myself again

I ate today, and even had a salad for lunch. It was a very nice mix of vegetables - I cut up grape tomatoes, carrots and turnip. It didn't need any dressing, and when I put some home made mustard/maple syrup dressing on it I realized that I prefer it undressed. My taste definitely changed.

Taz gave up Oreos today! That is one of the biggest changes she could have possibly expirienced

Fruit for dinner - Taz is attempting to get me to stop picking, but rather eat predefined meals and then stop. Berries, starfruit, apple, banana, etc. Tried a sweet mango too but it wasn't ripe.

As evening drew near I felt more free with eating that I have in a while - so I decided to have some Kefir. Mixed with Agave it's quite good. I even tasted some of the hot chocolate Taz made. She is looking at me like I have three heads!


Next morning update: This is the most energetic and strong I've felt in over a month! I am not sure if it's the cleansing that allows me to derive more from the raw food I eat, the B12 (and whatever else) in the Kefir, or what - but I feel awesome.

Afternoon weight: 132.5 (lowest yet)

It's strange, I already feel more energetic, and nothing has happened yet! It's all in my head, as always.

I couldn't wait for lunch, I made orange juice by 9am. And then some more. And then I ate an orange. It felt good, but I'm eating very mindfully, and slowly. Body is reacting, something in there is booting up. By lunch I had more oranges and we headed out to a birthday event. There I actually ate mixed fruit, and survived. More fruit when I got home, and some more orange juice before bed.

I feel a little heavy (especially compared with yesterday, but it's not bad). I know I wasn't following instructions, fruit wasn't supposed to start till like monday I think, but I feel fine.

(No access to a good scale this morning)

I wasn't home so didn't get to run or exercise, and since I got barely any sleep I had to work extra hard to get myself moving. Made lemonade for today using unfamiliar measuring equipment, and for some reason I only used 3 or 4 limes... I hope that's right, I had to convert to fluid oz's - and I wound up with 6 oz syrup, 6 oz lime juice and the rest water (2L total volume, I'm using 2 soda club bottles).

The lemonade turned out to be fine, but a bit tart. Since I always felt it a bit too sweet, I actually shifted the balance towards lime a bit - it was closer to 7oz lime and 5oz maple. This made it a lot more tart and less sweet, but I liked it overall. I once again did not drink the entire 2L today. Elimination became... well, eliminated from my schedule - it simply wasn't happening.

Evening rolled around and we were out shopping for oranges - I'm breaking the fast tomorrow. We found oranges we didn't like at a farm market, and onces we liked at ShopRite - go figure. I'm still running very cold but I'm more optimistic now - maybe it's the anticipation of change.

Morning weight: 133.5 (unchanged)

Still feel very weak. Couldn't bring myself to run or work out (yes I know I gave in to self pity there). Movement was sluggish and I slept on the bus again. Haven't had anything in my mouth yet today though, we'll see what happens later.

If I don't feel any significant improvement or cleansing progress, I am considering ending this sooner. The breaking phase consists of 2 days of fresh orange juice, which I am much more likely to have access to on the weekend, so tomorrow could be my last day.

By 10am (unusually early) I started drinking - I couldn't get myself moving. It helped, but only marginally. I skipped the tea (largely because I didn't have any with me, but I doubt I would be up for it). By lunch time I was done with half my lemonade. As work intensified I started waking up (external stimulation being the energy source) and when a one-hour phone interview was dumped in my lap, I finally became energized to the point where the top of my body warmed up (not so much for the lower half though).

This is something I neglected to mention - for the past 5 days or so I've had a difficult time maintaining normal body temperature, with dominant extremes tending towards being cold. I would occasionally get hot after too much lemonade but that would wear off quickly.

That said - my observations of internal intensity and its effect on my state emphasize just how much of a mental thing my state is. I am just gonna stop making excuses and put in the work. But if I don't feel the need to continue for the full 10 days, I don't need to.

I was away from home this night, and I failed to account for my total inability to produce passive body heat at this stage. I was in a cold room (below 70F) and had only one blanket - completely inadequate for sleep. If I'm conscious I probably can sustain some intensity in these conditions, but my goal was to sleep - and I couldn't. I eventually turned up the heat to 76° and then certain body sections were finally warm. In retrospect, a few extra blankets would have done the trick, but I wasn't thinking clearly. It would still have taken me a while to heat up the bed but it would have become possible.

Morning weight: 133.5 (the lowest it's been yet, though it's only 4 lbs down)

I finally went running (though it was snowing - but not as cold as it has been), worked out, drank a sip of water.
Relaxed on the bus, got to work and had the Smooth Move again. I am still feeling a bit of motion in the system from the last time. And it's still emptying, so that is a good sign.

I spoke with my reference yogi the other day and he pointed out that I have simply replaced one pattern with another - I used to eat constantly, and now I drink the lemonade all the time. So I figured I'd divide it into 'meals'. I had 3 cups or so at lunch time, and then I actually felt a bit of a sugar high. So I drank a bit around 4-5pm before getting on the bus going home, but didn't even finish it. Interestingly, as I got home I felt weaker than before, and actually started shaking a bit. Had some lemonade, it stopped. I guess that would be a sign of a sugar addiction?

Got the new phone system largely working, migraded hard drives, went to sleep. No tea or anything tonight.

Morning weight: (I forgot)

Just a workout, a little water.
Bus took a while but I was half asleep/half meditating.

As I was about to have the tea I stopped and wondered if it's really doing anything... so I used Smooth Move (that I only used the first day). It is certainly more effective. As the day progressed I felt rumbling and motion, and sure enough by 4pm I was saying: 'oh boy'. So I wasn't all cleaned out after all.

Taz thinks she's done on the cleanse based on her bathroom stats, but from my experience today I am wondering if that would be jumping the gun. I had next to nothing going on for 3 days and then it turned out I wasn't finished. We shall see.

No evening tea tonight, I am still processing this morning's.

We talked a bit about raw and other lifestyles, and I am growing more comfortable with not being 100% raw in the long term. I am enjoying the all-raw experiment for the time being and I would like it to be a clean one, but after I feel that I am done with it I will try to go on feel and expand my choices in an 'instincto' kinda way. I should practice the esoteric techniques I'm learning sometimes - not just talk about them

Morning weight: 136.5

No running, some workout, barely any water in the morning.
I am lugging two bottles of lemonade to work.
And this is my first time on the bus, which worked out just fine.

Had some of the fancy tea in the morning, then started drinking sometime after 11am. Made a valiant effort to further my cleansing progress today, but with basically no success.

I do still feel fine though, energy level is fine, though my focus is a bit... lacking. I can work on one thing but keeping track of a lot or really focusing and staying focused on one thing (eg a specific meditation) is just not working. Nor am I really putting that much effort into it (I admit).

Got home past 7pm, made some fresh lemonade and had some more of the fancy tea. Results: none.

Continued working like crazy on setting up the phones and sites until bedtime, which is of course not the best idea ever

Morning weight: 138.5

This is getting better and better.
I actually ran, worked out and felt just fine.
Started on lemonade around 11am (had the new senna tea first).

I have lots of technical stuff on my list today - setup a new server, move domains and apps between hosting spaces, configure things, buy hardware, etc. It's fun but it eats time like you would not believe.

I was able to become a little lighter sometime midday, though it was not without effort and some time commitment. Despite the time invested, the output was below average. I have no conjectures about reasons at this time. We'll just wait and see.

We took a break around 2pm and went to check out George Street Coop - a little store in New Brunswick that sells organic food (and you can partner with them too). We needed to buy lemons/limes anyway (10 days and 2 people call for a lot of lemons and limes). It's a really cute store and the food looks good, but they had no limes. So off we went to ShopRite - theirs didn't look too good so we picked out what we could. Eventually we drove past a farm market on Rt 18, and they had whatever we wanted! I have no idea if they are organic though. So now we are stocked for at least most of the remaining days.

Morning weight: 139

Got up fairly late, didn't go running as I got bogged down in administrative tasks - mostly domain/hosting/application related.
I wound up rewriting the story presentation engine, again - this time to generate a static site using smarty.

Had some of the tea in the morning, and started drinking lemonade around 11am.
The tea is quite effective, producing expected results. It's now 1.5 days since I've eaten anything solid and I'm using the bathroom as if there've been no changes in my lifestyle. I guess I've never really fasted for longer than 2 days at a time, so it hasn't occurred to me just how long it takes for food to work its way through the system... Or is it what I'm supposed to be getting rid of - the ballast I've been carrying for who knows how long?

Weight - 137.5 pounds

Since I got home past midnight, it is now friday.
12:30am - Drank some Smooth Move tea and went to bed.
night - some minor bloating but nothing significant
8:00am - It's smooth move alright, wake up, go, you're done.
8:30am - Running/workout, dump all the food in the fridget that won't last 10 days
10:00am - Drank 32oz of salt water. First half of that all at once, the rest over 15 minutes. It gets a bit unpleasant in the second half, but you can kinda think of it as lime juice - both taste salty.
12:00am - Started drinking the lemonade. Tastes fine but a bit too sweet. About 50-60oz over the next 6 hours. Some of it was lime, most lemon based.
Interestingly, most of the day I didn't feel hungry or think of food. Stomach is occasionally making noises but overall I don't feel weak.

OK so I guess I should respond to the whole Rye thing...
So I sprouted rye and wheat with granola in mind... but I didn't have time to deal with them when they were ready. So instead of letting them go to waste I figured I'd dehydrate them.

So I admit I had no idea how long it would take so I cranked up the timer to 6 hours at 115F, and by morning they were rock hard (that is also the state Taz encountered them in).

A few days later (last night) I got a minute, ground them up in the Ultimate Chopper (it's gotta be good for something, right?) and they turned into flower, sort of.

Since I was going into this with no plan, I just kept adding whatever I could find until it reached a consistency I felt was workable. So here are the ingredients and since I just tossed them in, I have no idea how much I used of each:

Even though I don't eat breakfast anymore, I do miss the taste of granola. I'm sure that down the road this old craving will die off, but for now I wanted to experiment, and we haven't yet attempted any granola recipe.

I stopped eating breakfast a bit before I went raw, because I noticed an interesting thing happening depending on whether I had food in the morning. On the days when I had breakfast (or any food whatsoever before lunch) I would be super hungry and all about food, barely waiting for lunch. I would also feel a bit heavy and sluggish. On days when I would have nothing but water until noon, I was not hungry, felt lighter and definitely more balanced, to the point of having a calm and collected awareness. I won't claim to have more energy, but I enjoy the benefits I mentioned.

So I thought I'd add a few things regarding the birthday raw stuff.

First of all, the Vanilla Creme is from the Raw Food Real World book... and while we may have changed the recipe slightly, it was spectacular. We overloaded the Vita-Mix (again) while making it, filling it to the top, literally. It was having a hard time chewing through 4" pieces of coconut, and overheated a couple of times. I tossed the base into the freezer for 20 minutes and then we resumed. The problem with the Vita Mix is that the motor is cooled by its own rotation, meaning that the temperature will rise if it is unable to spin as fast as I am asking it to. In the case of the Vanilla Creme I needed to run it slower because the bottom would become a pocket of well-mixed mixture at high speed. I also didn't want to boil (and cook) the stuff. Eventually we simply decided that the consistency was fine enough, so it came out a bit chunky, but I really like it.

We managed to pour the 60 ounces of the stuff into various containers, including an empty Loosa bottle... This works great if you think of the creme as a liquid - which it is, up until it goes into the fridge. Now I'm using a 15" slicing knife to retrieve chunks of creme from the bottom

Did I mention it was well worth the work?